As I read The Road (I’m not quite to the finish) what seems most powerful to me is the style that McCarthy uses in creating the post-apocalyptic.  The grayness of the text seems so vividly real, and depressive.  Descriptions of ash, of the layers of worn and distressed clothing and blankets, of the rare pleasure of finding food, the frustration when that food is contaminated, are rendered in such a way that though the language is overwhelming drab, and dark, and dreary, it is an image quite easy to realize in the mind, and immediately something profoundly tragic.   Continue reading →